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He had seen Indian telegraphy before, and had learned to comprehend a great deal of those mysterious signs and signals by which news is carried across mountain and prairie with incredible speed. He had ridden his fleet mustang to death to head off some of these telegrams, and yet in every case the Indians, by some trickery unexplained to him, had outsped him.
Then he forgot that she delighted to tease him, that her favorite pastime was to chase the young chicks and cause a tremendous flutter in the poultry yard; and how vexed he had been when she let his mustang out of the enclosure, "because," she said, "Twinkling Hoofs needs a bit of fun and a scamper as well as anybody; and he was trying to open the gate with his nose."
A breeze whipped in, making the fire roar softly. The sun felt warm on his cheek. And at the moment he heard the whistle of his horse. "Good old Nagger!" he said. "I shore won't have to track you this mornin'." Presently he went off into the cedars to find Nagger and the mustang that he used to carry a pack. Nagger was grazing in a little open patch among the trees, but the pack-horse was missing.
"Mind what?" asked the scout, somewhat startled at his manner. "Jes' look yonder, will ye?" As he spoke, he pointed up the slope ahead of them. There, but a comparatively short distance away, was Fred Munson, in plain sight, seated upon the back of his mustang, apparently scrutinizing the two horsemen, as if in doubt as to their identity.
The lad was reminded of his imprudence by the flash of a rifle almost in his face, and the whizz of the bullet which grazed his cheek. But he still had two loaded chambers in his revolver, and he wheeled for the purpose of sending one of them at least, into the warrior that had made an attempt upon his life. At this critical juncture the mustang displayed an intelligence that was wonderful.
The lumbering stage and caravan laboring across the plains, and the swift mustang flying from post to post, frequently intercepted by the wily savage, were but things of yesterday, though fast becoming legendary.
Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then slowly retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang. He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that interruption. A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from the bough of an adjacent tree.
Away he swept, with all the quickness of which his own wearied steed was capable, and Poke Stover followed him. The white mustang saw them coming, and set off into the timber on a feeble run. The course of the pursued creature was around the northern approach to San Antonio and then toward the Medina River.
Dick Varley had spent so much of his boyhood in sporting about among the waters of the rivers and lakes near which he had been reared, and especially during the last two years had spent so much of his leisure time in rolling and diving with his dog Crusoe in the lake of the Mustang Valley, that he had become almost as expert in the water as a South Sea islander; so that when he found himself whirling down the rapid river, as already described, he was more impressed with a feeling of gratitude to God for his escape from the Indians than anxiety about getting ashore.
Yet the wild thrills I had!... But I stuck on and held my own for several miles to the edge of the cedars. There the big horse gained on me. He came pounding closer perhaps as close as a hundred yards I could hear him plain enough. Then I had my spill. Oh, my mustang tripped threw me 'way over his head. I hit light, but slid far and that's what scraped me so.
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